The Michel Serres Institute at the Anthropocenic Research Forum

The Michel Serres Institute will take part to the Anthropocenic Research Forum in Berlin on Thursday 10th of January 2013, responding to the invitation from the Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Nature as we know it is a concept that belongs to the past. No longer a force separate from and ambivalent to human activity, nature is neither an obstacle nor a harmonious other. Humanity forms nature. Humanity finds itself embedded within the recent geological record.’ This is the core premise of the Anthropocene thesis, announcing a paradigm shift in the natural sciences as well as providing new models for culture, politics, and everyday life.

Anthropocenic Research Forum

What academic themes, methodological positions, and epistemic practices are relevant for a critical engagement with the Anthropocene ? With these questions in mind, the international research projects invited to this FORUM present their work and give insight to a variety of scholarly approaches in relation to the Anthropocene thesis. Alongside themes such as the Earth system, resources, education, epistemology, and law, the Forum traces and outlines the first steps towards a possible, transdisciplinary field that might be called “Anthropocenic research.”